Material Properties of Hard and Soft Piezoelectric Ceramics at Cryogenic Temperatures

Inhalt:
It is well known that piezoelectric ceramic materials behave differently at cryogenic temperatures compared to ambient temperature. Temperature dependency of material properties such as dielectric and piezoelectric coefficients are characterized in the literature. In this study, we present complete sets of material properties at different temperatures for two types of piezoelectric ceramics, namely hard PZT (PIC 181) and soft PZT (PIC 255), respectively. For each material, a complete set of mechanical, piezoelectric, and dielectric coefficients was obtained by resonance characteristics of differently shaped piezoelectric samples. Transverse, longitudinal, thickness, shear and planar resonance modes were measured at temperatures from 300 K down to about 80 K. From these measurements, the material parameters were calculated for each temperature following DIN EN 50324. Using GID-ATILA finite-element-analysis (FEA) software, their corresponding impedance spectra were calculated and compared with the measured data.